Eccentric Night Owl

Quote from Blood Read

"An ambiguously coded figure, a source of both erotic anxiety and corrupt desire, the literary vampire is one of the most powerful archetypes bequeathed to us from the imagination of the nineteenth century."~ page 2 introduction to Blood Read: The Vampire as Metaphor in Contemporary Culture

Intellectual Vampire Quote

"If the vampire is an other, he or she was always a figure in whom one could find one's self...the despicable as well as the defiant, the shameful as well as the unashamed, the loathing of oddness as well as pride in it."~ Richard Dyer

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Thursday, April 26, 2012

Anyone who wants to be a
writer has to be a reader. I cannot
imagine a wannabe writer who never reads. Do composers never listen to music?
Do artists not look at paintings?

Surprising for someone who
writes mysteries, my own reading taste is all over the place. I go more by the voice or how it sounds.
Typically I can tell within the first paragraph if I’m going to like the book.

And it’s books that got me
interested in writing—the promise of adventure, the chance to be somewhere I
could never go and do things beyond my limitations. Books are what hooked me
into spending my evenings and weekends plunking at the keyboard and weaving
mysteries. I give you here a list of ten
books that influenced my writing.

1.The
Time Machine by H.G.
Wells

2.The
Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K.
Rowling

3.In
the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead by James Lee Burke

4.The
Bad Beginning or, Orphans!
by Lemony Snicket

5.Casino
Royale by Ian Fleming

6.Interview
with the Vampire by Ann
Rice

7.Hound
of the Baskervilles by
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

8.1984 by George Orwell

9.The
Poisonwood Bible by
Barbara Kingsolver

1.The
Shining by Stephen King

Some
of the books listed here I read as a teenager, including the James Bond
thrillers. While some may argue that Bond doesn’t fit in with fine literature,
the books are still selling well on Amazon. Also, I give credit to Ann Rice who
reintroduced the vampire with fresh material back in the 80’s. Anyone wanting
to learn the art of suspense needs to read King. He can spend pages slowly
ratcheting up a terrifying moment. I mention The Poisonwood Bible because Kingsolver did such a wonder job writing
multiple first person point-of-views. And I include Burke because of his
excellent Dave Robicheaux murder mysteries.

I
saved talking about Lemony Snicket until last. While writing the first two
Penelope mysteries, his books were top on my reading list. First he did what most writers were told not
to do. He would make aside comments to
reader and do it quite well. Second, the things I loved about his books were
the over-the-top quirky characters.
Probably that influenced the Penelope series the most. The characters you’ll run into in Penelope and The Movie Star and the
other books are a bit different, bigger than life, but always fun.

Marvel Movies comes to Tiffin Preparatory School to shoot a motion picture against the backdrop of the old Windorf Hotel that now houses the school. Penelope sneaks onto the set and watches them film a scene. Famous actors Priscilla Young and Clarence Dodd star in the movie and Penelope gets to see them up close. Regrettably, she also sees a spotlight fall on the director and kill him. Penelope claims she had her eyes shut when it happened, but the police think she may remember something. Unfortunately for her, the killer also thinks she may recall something.

To complicate matters, the school has a new cook, and Penelope’s friend Raddy thinks Chef Judy is trying to poison them. The new girl at school steals away everyone’s friends. As always Principal Merriweather keeps finding new ways to expel her. Between trying to get her friends back, starving and keeping away from the killer, she has her hands full in this next Penelope Mystery.

Ron D. Voigts lives in Raleigh, NC and sometimes somewhere else. When back in Raleigh, he enjoys time with his family, watches old movies and shoots lots of pool. He has his own private writer's retreat in La Vale, MD where he spends lots of time working on his next novel while enjoying the mountains and eating ice cream.